The present invention is related to the music synthesizer and method of U.S. Pat. No. 5,157,216 issued to the same inventor, Christopher D. Chafe, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention.
Musical tones from acoustic bowed string and wind instruments, though nearly periodic, have a noise component that is a subtle but crucial part of the sound. The invention in U.S. Pat. No. 5,157,216 and the present invention are attempts to simulate these instruments in digital electronic synthesizers and to improve the quality of the noise component of the musical sounds generated by those synthesizers.
The present invention is based on a new description or model of the noise generation mechanism in wind instruments, including the flute, saxophone, clarinet, oboe, other single and double reed instruments, lip reed instruments, air jet instruments and the voice (including whispers and glottal sounds).
Analyses by the inventor have verified the existence of the noise predicted by this new model, and digital simulations using the present invention have synthesized tones with improved edge tones and reed-tone sound qualities.
The precise quality of the noise generated when electronically synthesizing the tones of wind instruments is important in achieving an improved sound synthesis capability. It is also important to model the edge tones and reed tones generated by reeds and switching air jets, and the noise component of those reed tones and edge tones, in order to generate sounds similar to those generated by acoustic wind instruments. Mixing sets of sinusoidal waveforms with spectrally shaped Gaussian noise has not proved sufficient. There is no perceptual fusion of the noise and periodic sounds, and the listener hears two sources. A subjective impression from the best attempts to mix in spectrally shaped Gaussian noise is that the noise is "not well-incorporated." The present invention uses a form of period synchronous noise to affect the operation of edge-tone/reed-tone generation, and thus to affect the quality of synthesized edge tones and reed tones, which are then used to drive a resonator.